KAILUA-KONA, HI – The weeklong workshop to apply key components of the award-winning Kona Community Development Plan (CDP) to the Honokohau Village site ended in a Tuesday night presentation at the Sheraton Keauhou Bay Resort. But already the week’s efforts were earning endorsements from many folks, including those with the tasks of taking the plans forward.

Mayor Kenoi met with the PlaceMakers team Tuesday morning.

Members of the PlaceMakers consulting team met on Tuesday morning with Mayor Billy Kenoi, who repeated his support for the project. And earlier, community members were enthusiastic about previews of the final product.

Tuesday night, more than 50 people attended the PlaceMakers presentation. Key elements of the overall plan are explained by PlaceMakers planner Geoff Dyer in the video below. (Note: If you don’t have the capacity to download videos, don’t worry. Details of the week’s proceedings are covered in text and still images augmented by the videos.)

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Immediately below are images taken from the presentation. And below the images are videos of reactions from attendees.

Watch these pages for updates of the Honokohau Village Process over the coming weeks.

ABOVE: This regulating plan serves as the "zoning" for the property, in accordance with the Village Design Guidelines. However, it differs from conventional zoning in that it places a higher focus on form, character and intensity, and then mixes uses accordingly. Click image for larger view.

ABOVE: The illustrative plan demonstrates how, in accordance with the regulating plan, the property might build out. Click image for larger view.

ABOVE: Various architectural techniques can be employed to maintain a coherent streetscape while addressing the site's sloping condition. Click image for larger view.

ABOVE: Honokohau Village's civic building at the heart of the community, which would likely also serve as the primary transit stop. Click image for larger view.

ABOVE: A primarily residential street scene, featuring the integration of multiple product types. Click image for larger view.

ABOVE: Addressing sloping grade through alleyways and tuck-under parking. Click image for larger view.

ABOVE: Addressing the sloping grade through this bungalow court, small homes sharing a central pedestrian greenway and featuring rear-access parking. Click image for larger view.

KAILUA-KONA, HI – Hours before the Monday-night “pin-up” of work-in-progress for the Honokohau Village TOD, PlaceMakers lead designer Geoff Dyer offered a peek at the team’s thinking so far. The idea is to provide a mixed-use neighborhood, closely integrated with the emerging West Hawaii Civic Center, where people can live, work, and play without relying exclusively on automobile travel.

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By Tuesday evening, when the weeklong charrrette concludes, the PlaceMakers’ master plan will be refined for a final time, based on feedback from County officials, developer teams, and community members who’ve visited the studio over the week. To see where the design effort began, check out the introductory narration of PlaceMakers project principal Susan Henderson earlier in the week. And to get an overview of the project, read the Big Picture post to the immediate right.

The fleshed out Honokonau Village master plan that emerges on Tuesday is, of course, a demonstration plan. It’s a way for the three partners in the process – the County, the community, and the PlaceMakers consulting team – to collaborate on the application of key components of the Kona Community Development Plan (CDP) to a real place. The charrette, like the CDP process itself, has been a true community effort, with the work-in-progress design explained by Geoff Dyer above the result of dozens of reviews and revisions.

An eventual, implementable plan must pass muster with the community, the County, and development teams responsible for making the investment to realize the project. For a view of the County’s perspective, listen to the County’s director of planning talk about the project. And for a developer’s outlook, check this video from Bob McClean, whose company owns a substantial section of the Honokohau Village site.

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Don’t forget Tuesday night’s final aloha presentation at 6:30 p.m. Location and directions are on the Location tab in the toolbar above. And if you can’t make the presentation in person, you can catch up on all the essentials here on the website – plus comment on what you see.

KAILUA-KONA, HI – With broad Kona community goals already established, thanks to the award-winning Kona Community Development Plan (CDP), the second day of the Honokohau Village charrette ended with a community talk story seeking to apply the goals to a specific place.

Susan Henderson, director of design for the PlaceMakers consulting team, said the opening discussions constitute “a baby step” towards customizing the CDP-enabled Village Design Guidelines. “We welcome your continued input over the next five days.”

Residents viewed examples of Kona character, from the simple to the more ornate.

To demonstrate how Kona-appropriate guidelines might be “calibrated” to produce development consistent with local character and the wishes of residents, the PlaceMakers consultants displayed a draft summary table that lists particular rules for setbacks, building frontages, and other characteristics that determine the look and feel of a place. By the charrette’s concluding presentation next Tuesday evening, the table will reflect all the input and idea-testing during the week. It will be part of the first rough draft of the Village Design Guidelines.

There are still multiple opportunities for participation in the remaining days of the charrette schedule. If you need a general overview of the project’s goals, read our BIG PICTURE summary in the column immediately to the right.

The talk story sessions on Thursday focused on goals the community team wants to keep in mind as the guidelines customization continues. Conserving and enhancing the natural resources of the Island and of Kona in particular were key topics in one session, where participants talked about ways general lessons of sustainability might be applied to this project and ways in which unique aspects of Hawai`i and the study area (the soil characteristics of lava, for instance) demand special attention.

Fortunately, sustainability goals are automatically enhanced by transit oriented design. Compact development that offers multiple choices for getting around means fewer Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) by private automobile and less green house gases in the atmosphere.

Lowering VMT and expanding transportation alternatives, especially the human-powered alternatives of bicycling and walking, supports a second goal under discussion in the Thursday talk story sessions: community affordability. Buying, insuring, and maintaining an automobile adds $8,000-9,000 to family budgets, according to AAA estimates. If families are able to get by with even one less car, the savings free up cash for other needs. And if communities are allowed to reserve less real estate for parking and for highway-scale thoroughfares, taxpayer money can be invested in ways that offer more direct benefits for everyone.

CEOs for Cities, a non-profit advocacy group for leaders in metro planning, estimate that reducing VMT per person by one mile per day in each of the 51 largest metro areas would produce annual household savings approaching $30 billion.